For too long zombies have been presented as the bad guy, and now it’s time for the zombies to get their own back. Awesome Games Studio has brought I, Zombie from the small screen of your iPhone, to the bigger screen of your home TV.

Your objective is to recruit all of the humans to your zombie horde, whilst trying to save as many as you can. It’s a simple premise but requires good strategy and patience to succeed. Each level requires you to convert, and rescue a specific number of zombies to progress to the next level. It is your task to guide the hapless zombies around, dodging bullets and attacking both helpless humans and gun-wielding soldiers alike. As you complete a level, you are given a star rating, out three, depending on how many you save. Thankfully time is not a factor in the star rating, and only the number of rescues counts towards completion. It appears that regardless of how many you save, as long as you complete the level you can progress to the next.

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To mix things up a bit, there is the odd curve ball thrown in which mixes up the gameplay a little bit. These would often throw me, as I would stare with unease at the level presented, trying to work out how I can pass what appears to be quite a complex level. It is then I realised that it was one of these alternate levels, which required me to only attack the mad scientist who was developing stronger weapons for the soldiers, or that I was to guide a lowly zombie around the level from my original spawn point. These guidance levels are a nice addition to the fairly standard gameplay of the rest of the levels, and offered an opportunity to really think about how you were going to succeed.

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Overall there are a total of 20 original levels, with an additional 10 Christmas/winter themed levels. The winter theme introduces a new hidey-hole in the guise of snowmen, buying you time as you hide from your enemy, trying to work out your next move. It was rather odd sitting there, surrounded by my band of merry zombies, all huddled around a snowman, without being spotted. As you progress through the levels, the challenges you face increase in difficulty, and will leave you scratching your head for a while as you try and work out the best path forward. Unfortunately it doesn’t take long before you start to struggle, as right out of the tutorial you are faced with some quite puzzling stages.

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Visually, I, Zombie has a nice style to it. It’s well drawn, but the quality is that of a well presented mobile game, similar in style to Plants vs Zombies, and other similar titles. The winter levels feel a little more polished, and have a bit more character to them, but it does feel as though these were tagged onto the original 20 levels.

As tricky as I, Zombie could be, unfortunately it only took me around three and a half hours to complete all 30 levels, and left me needing only three more achievements to 100% the game. I was disappointed with this, as other titles I have played with a similar premise, still had me scratching my head long after three and a half hours. It would have been nice to have more levels, or at least the promise of more levels in the future. However, at an incredibly low price of £3.19, its a neat little game to pick up if you have money sitting in your Microsoft account.

Thanks to Xbox and Awesome Games Studio for supporting TiX